"Estimates indicate between 100,000 and 300,000 children are trafficked for sex in the US each year, with the average victim being just 14 years of age."

I'll quote from my favorite myth-debunker, because she does so eloquently. But with a little thought, you should see that those numbers are absurd.

"That myth is a distortion of an absurd estimate from the Estes & Weiner study of 2001, which estimated that number of “children, adolescents and youth (up to 21) at risk of sexual exploitation”. “Sex trafficking” was the least prevalent form of “exploitation” in their definition; other things they classed as “exploitation” included stripping, consensual homosexual relations and merely viewing porn. Two of the so-called “risk factors” were access to a car and proximity to the Canadian or Mexican border. When interviewed by reporters in 2011, Estes himself estimated the number of legal minors actually abducted into “sex slavery” as “very small…We’re talking about a few hundred people.”"

And the actual episode, the actual point of the endeavor? How did you feel about that?

Everyone else - Please take note: many less children and women are being enslaved for sexual ends than one particular group claims. Many still are, just that the actual numbers are indeterminate and debatable. Please do your own research and determine how many tens, hundreds or thousands of women and children right now are actually being enslaved for sexual use, how close that number is to zero, and how you personally feel about how low or high that number is in relation to your conception of the world as a place to live in. And then live with that knowledge.

There are 74 million children in the US. If there were even 100,000 sex trafficked children (the low end of the statistics you cite), that would be 1 sex slave in 740 children. You're honestly want to frighten people by saying that it's more likely that a child will become a sex slave than a child will, oh, die of any cause whatsoever? You really don't understand why this would be more distracting than your fiction story?

Anyway, sorry. I'll stop. I just needed to seriously spank you guys over this one. I won't go on about it, though. 'Nuff said.

Who cares about the number? One is too many. What an awful, awful thing that this can happen, and happen frequently.

Yes, one is too many, and it is terrible that this can happen (though "frequently" seems to be in doubt). But we care about the number because it informs the proportionality of our response. It is a sad fact that we do not have infinite resources, and we need to take care to distribute them where they will have the most good. Should we devote more attention to preventing sex-trafficking, or to children being abused by their legal guardians? To car safety or to gun safety? Cancer or food poisoning?

These questions have a moral calculus that is larger than the raw numbers, and everyone will come up with their own weighting for which is most important / urgent, but without an understanding of how many people will be aided by our actions, no coherent policy (either on an individual or societal) can be considered.

I spent a few years working for a residential program for "troubled" kids. In that time I met several kids we either knew or strongly suspected were some kind of trafficking victim.

It was never something they'd talk about directly but y'know..... 14-year-old with a 20-something "boyfriend" that keeps a tight leash on them, disappears into the city to "go to parties" for days at a time sometimes, keeps ending up with assorted STIs, the math isn't really difficult.

Are the originally quoted numbers very likely wrong? Sure. And we should absolutely care about getting it right. But comparing this issue to the "Satanic Panic" of the 80s (a moral panic supported by no actual evidence and essentially made up out of whole cloth), or writing it off as an overblown "think of the children" issue (especially given how clear the endnote information is about the range of people this affects) is grossly, massively dismissive of the real people affected by this issue, however many they actually are.

I know I'm late to this discussion, and others have made my primary point, to wit: the number of victims cited after the story are probably grossly inflated. But here's a good read from Reason Magazine that goes into much more detail, including the reasons why it's harmful in many ways to overstate or misrepresent the problem: